This 12 months’s Holy Week brings us two competing visions of Jesus Christ; one from a really conventional supply, Pope Leo XIV, and one from the self-labeled secretary of struggle, Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth is an active member of a church that promotes Christian nationalism, the motion that asserts that the USA is a Christian nation by which Christians ought to dominate all sectors of society, from authorities and academia to enterprise and tradition. Hegseth has added to that his personal spin that owes as a lot to the wrathful God of the Outdated Testomony – or, maybe, Conan the Barbarian – because it does to the younger rabbi from Nazareth.
In the newest month-to-month worship service that he leads on the Pentagon, Hegseth supplied up a prayer for the U.S. troops battling Iran: “Let each spherical discover its mark towards the enemies of righteousness and our nice nation,” Hegseth prayed. “Give them knowledge in each choice, endurance for the trial forward, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of motion towards those that deserve no mercy.”
On Palm Sunday, the Pope offered a distinctly different message to the world, implicitly condemning both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran: “Brothers and sisters, that is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects struggle, whom nobody can use to justify struggle. He doesn’t take heed to the prayers of those that wage struggle, however rejects them, saying: ‘Regardless that you make many prayers, I cannot hear: your fingers are filled with blood.’”
Pope Leo is backed by 2,000 years of Christian custom, however Hegseth is empowered by one thing extra private: He doesn’t thoughts having blood on his fingers.
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